Beginner’s guide to WordPress!

Posted on September 7th, 2018,
by Charlotte Wibrew

In this blog, I am going to outline what WordPress is, how it can be the best way to create a website for your business, and how the WordPress professionals at Cariad can help you with building an effective website to generate leads for your business!

What is WordPress?

WordPress is an easy-to-use website CMS. CMS stands for content management system, meaning you are able to control the creation and editing of a website from the back-end user interface. This involves creating and editing the individual pages, uploading your own media and choosing the design you would like for your business website. WordPress is free to use, has thousands of themes (designs for how you want your website to look) and the ability to use plugins (functionalities such as job boards or social sharing options).

It is an effective system to use, particularly for businesses who want to get their content online in order to generate leads, or for bloggers who want to upload their work regularly and edit their pages. There are two ways to use WordPress, but you can figure out which one to use by determining what kind of website you need.

WordPress.org is free self-installation software which allows the creator to have more control as they create and build their site. You can use your own domain name, upload and install themes and plugins, edit the code behind your site and have access to your site’s database.

WordPress.com is best suited for beginners as it hosts their site online. It features ready-to-use template designs and allows you to easily create pages for more personal uploads such as blogs.

Something I found very reassuring and inclusive, when I was researching the basics of WordPress, is how big the community is and how much shared information is available online for beginners! This community ranges from designers to professionals who have some handy tips and tricks or who have created free-to-use templates that look effective.

Why should I use WordPress?

We recommend WordPress websites to companies who are looking for the option to make ongoing updates to their websites themselves. Adding new pages, news articles, posts to your blog and images is quick and easy. WordPress websites have extensive blogging capabilities and your company news and industry events can be shared with your customers via RSS and email subscriptions. As the foundation of any online business strategy, all companies need a web design that is user-friendly, looks professional across all electronic devices and delivers measurable results in the form of leads, sales and enquiries.

Luckily at Cariad, we have a team of WordPress professionals that have racked up a hefty list of website creations that are all fully responsive, look clean and professional and each one has a creative, individual design. James, our Creative Manager, had this to say on why WordPress is the best tool for creating effective websites for businesses.

‘It’s common knowledge that WordPress was once a platform built solely for bloggers. Although WordPress is still an excellent choice for your blogging website, it’s now possible to create any type of website you can think of. Whether you are a small start-up company or a highly successful organisation, its possibilities are only really limited by your imagination. Also, almost everything can be achieved with its vast library of free plugins and themes. Plus, for greater, and perhaps more niche, functionality there is also the option to purchase premium themes and plugins which can be switched or plugged into your website in just a few clicks.

WordPress is an extremely powerful content management system boasting 75,000,000 websites using it; that’s roughly 30% of all websites on the internet! If that’s not a big enough selling point, I don’t know what is.

I would recommend that anyone, who is serious about providing the best online experience for their clients, should refresh their website roughly every five years. I say this because technology can change so much during this time, and you don’t want your competitors to leave you behind and your website’s performance to fall short. With WordPress, the core code base is kept up to date regularly, offering new features and optimisations in each release. Also, when you’re ready for a new look, you can simply design or purchase a new theme and apply it without any downtime.’

We’ve already got some blogs in our vault which explain what makes a successful website, what to look for when choosing a web developer and why we suggest gaining an SSL Certificate for your site’s data security.

If you need a fresh pair of eyes to review your business website or a completely new build, we are here and eager to help! Contact us to discuss the next step in your WordPress journey with Cariad!

2 Responses to “Beginner’s guide to WordPress!”

WordPress is a juggernaut in the world of websites – it’s just managed to stay on the down low while brands like Apple shout more loudly about their offerings to the world. But arguably WordPress is far more valuable to us – without the millions of websites created on its platform, there would be no websites to scroll through on iPhone. So many websites, even the most reputable ones, are created with from WordPress. It’s ease of use and reputability are excellent and unusually reliable for the digital world.